The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 30 November 1916, Page 3

The Storyteller

By Anna T. Sadlier.

PHILEAS FOX, ATTORNEY

[By Arrangement with the Ave Maria (Continued.) VII. Singular indeed was the narrative to which the young lawyer was called upon to listen, though its leading features were of all too frequent occurrence in the whirl of large cities. It seemed a strange thing for Phileas to be sitting there as the confidential adviser of a great lady who had been conspicuous in the world before the young man had been born, and everything about whom, from the leaf on hex'* flowered brocade to the gold eyeglasses which hung from her neck, and through which she occasionally looked at him, was outwardly worthy of respect. But inwardly his sturdy manhood abhorred those misdeeds to which she had confessed, and his Catholic principles revolted from a course of action that was so flagrantly dishonest and so injurious to another.

* From the time of which I speak,' went on Mrs. Wilson, in that same high-pitched voice that was altogether refined, though grating upon the ear, ' I lived in a very whirl of gaiety. " I entertained lavishly, gathering into my house all whom I considered as best, socially or intellectually. My name, in so far as I permitted its use, figured in fashionable assemblies of all sorts, and even in philanthropic schemes. T married Mr. James Van Vechten Wilson, of whom you may have heard—or perhaps it was before your generation —as a yachtsman with horses upon the turf. He was very fond of amusement; being, in fact, what you of the present clay would probably describe as "an all round sport." ' Despite the gravity of the situation, Phileas put up his hand to conceal a smile, so oddly did the familiar expression sound upon the lips of that, stately relic of a bygone generation. Mrs. Wilson was far too much occupied with the picture she was painting on the dark background of her past to observe the movement.

" Our life together,' she continued, ' was not long. Severely injured in the hunting field, he lingered for a few months: and during that period the spectre of conscience that had pursued me through all my frivolities awoke to life. As I am laying bare to you, for your full enlightenment, my psychological history, I will say that I made some attempt at expiation; but that spectre of conscience has never since been laid. And, Mr. Fox, I may add en passant that it had its root in a year which I spent at a French convent long ago.

• That episode in my life, however, was soon over and done with. I wore mourning for the conventional period. I had lost some of my best friends by a course of action which was not viewed so indulgently then as now for I was a divorced woman when I married Mr. Wilson. In the New York of my young days, a divorcee, no matter what her connections or prestige, was not altogether eligible for the most exclusive and conservative element of society.. Still, I contrived to find here and abroad sufficient to keep me in a giddy whirl, that served to drown recollection, to console me for a twofold sorrow, and the stings of a remorse, becoming stronger as youth was succeeded by middle age, and that again by the shadows of old age, which I. dreaded most of all. During this interval, strange to relate, I held on more tenaciously than ever to my illgotten goods. Needless to weary you with the tale.' The old woman stopped as was her wont, and put her hand to her chest, as if she felt there the exhaustion that was expressed on her face. 'I met in quite an accidental way Father Van Buren, who impressed upon my mind an ideal of saintlihess that I had never wholly lost. Of course the

books I was reading, the atmosphere wherein "I lived, would have caused me to be sceptical of the existence of real goodness,- had not those convent memories lain deep within my heart. That chance meeting with the priest awoke thoughts and reflections that caused the cankering sores of sorrow and remorse to reopen. Old age had begun to weigh upon me ; I was compassed by its shadows and its terrors. The stakes for which I had played must soon be snatched from my hands those hands that were empty of good deed. I felt that I was speedily to be called from those scenes, whither I could not guess. Some one must have been praying for me, Mr. Fox : for each time that I encountered the Father I felt those fears, those longings for pardon and peace, stronger within my soul. Not that the priest ever, by word or by sign, broached those unpalatable subjects ; on the contrary, his conversation was always light, cheerful, even amusing, as that of one who is at peace with God and with the world. Once or twice, when meeting him at the house of a mutual friend, T caught his eye fixed on me with an expression of the purest pity, and I could guess what he was thinking, even with the superficial knowledge he then had of my story.'

Phileas listened as one fascinated while the thin, metallic voice recounted this strange history: and it occurred to him that there was more scope for the ministrations of Father Van Buren or some other ghostly ministrant than for his own. Nothing, in his life at home or at college had prepared him for such an experience as this. lie felt himself lacking both in insight and in sympathy, and was becoming discouraged ; the whole current of his clear young mind was in the direction of horror and repulsion.

' A year ago 1 was suddenly stricken by an illness that threatened to terminate fatally. In the ghastly terror of that time, overwhelmed by the realisation of my sins against society and individuals, I sent for Father Van Buren. During the several visits he paid me, he asked me, I remember, whether there was any special circumstance that could account for my present state of mind. I answered that in my far-off convent days there had been a nun who had interested me especially, and who had taken a particular interest in the Protestant American. When I was leaving she had called me to her, in a little room looking out over the historic Invalides, and the Park that had been the theatre of so many events. She had promised me then, in saying farewell, that she would pray for me, and never cease to pray until we met in heaven. Those last words were vividly impressed upon my memory, as well as the touching expression with which she had concluded: "For you will go to heaven, my child; will you not?"'

The old woman paused to wipe with tremulous hand the perspiration that had gathered on her brow. ' I never got quite rid of the impression. It remained something tangible and real behind all the

froth and glitter of life, —something that it terrified me to remember, but that, curiously enough, did not deter me from the evil things I have done.'

Phileas Fox, feeling hopelessly young and bewildered, but yet with a certain natural' fineness of perception, began to experience an awakening sympathy and the slow dawn of comprehension. Evil is so fatally alluring ! And good hovers often as a shadowy abstraction, with which it is so hard to grapple unaided by the illumination of,faith and its authoritative sanction.

'ln short, Mr. Fox,' continued the old woman, ' I might sum it all up by saying that a woman naturally and by heredity honest, in whom honesty was an atavistic quality, but without other guide or bulwark, found herself suddenly confronted by a powerful temptation to dishonesty, and yielded, though suffering keenly for the transgression.' The speaker, leaning forward upon the table, emphasised her words by a peculiar gesture of the head. ' 'lt is, perhaps, more surprising,' she declared, ' that I yielded in another direction, — who had been brought up in an atmosphere of the most fastidious refinement, and who was by nature conservative to a

degree, and distant even to haughtiness in my deportment. 1 permitted my name to become for months the topic of every club-house and drawing-room in NewYork, as the central figure in a divorce case, —I who had always held divorce to be, from an ethical point of view, a very real degradation. All that belongs to a part of my subject which I have not as yet broached, and which is the most painful of the revelations that I have to make/

She had an intuitive perception of the distress and embarrassment these disclosures caused to the young and right-minded attorney, to whom criminology fn its various phases was as yet known only from the pages of his law books. In some vexation of spirit, Mrs. Wilson found the difficulties of her confession increased by the listener's inexperience; and, despite her faith in the good priest, she muttered to herself " Father Van Buren should not have sent me this boy.'

She felt this at the moment to be a distinct grievance. An older man would have divined, would have understood. But when she let her keen gaze rest upon the frank face, embarrassed indeed, yet upon which a dawning sympathy was so plainly written, she realised that Father Van Buren had been right, and that in the manliness and innate gentleness, of the young lawyer she was sure of a chivalrous regard for her feelings, such as she could not have been certain of finding in an older practitioner.

• Mr. Fox,' she said, ' I hope that in your own mind you do not condemn me too unreservedly.' She spoke thus with eagerness, and a wistful deprecation of judgment, which showed that the'woman was not all hardened, all sceptical. After a moment she added:

' You who have lived under the protecting shadow of the faith, can never know, can never understand. I realise now that to be without that certain guide is to walk blindfold through a morass, and it is only a wonder that any reach the opposite shore in safety.' As she paused again, Phileas said, and there was something of heartfelt sympathy in his tone : • There is no question of condemnation, Mrs. Wilson. lam deeply interested and —very sorry.' That was the first time in all her three-score and

ten years that any one had ever said to the haughty woman of fashion that he was sorry for her. She had heard countless flattering words,—words of admiration, of love, even of condemnation, —but none had hitherto associated with her the idea of pity. Some years before, she would have rejected the offering with indignant scorn : at this moment it was welcome as dew to a parched flower.

' Yes,' she said, 'you are sorry for me and, though I do not deserve it, that is the appropriate feeling toward me, and 1 thank you for it.'

Since Phileas had touched the right note, the old woman seemed reassured ; she proceeded with more ease? and a less defiant attitude :

' When I told Father Van Buren of that saintly nun—of whose death I heard but recently, with a peculiar shock, as of the departure of one with whom I had failed to keep faith, —and when 1 represented her as the chief factor for good in my life, I likewise had to inform him of my close and intimate relation with a Catholic of the fine old heroic type, whose example and whose counsels were unhappily thrown away by my own perversity and my own wrongdoing.' Pondering as it were upon this disclosure, which she seemed to utter introspectively, and as if addressed to herself rather than to the young man, Mrs. Wilson suddenly addressed to him a question : ' Has it never occurred to you, Mr. Fox, to inquire in what relation to John Vorst stood Martha Spooner,—l mean, of course, apart from that of plaintiff toward the defendant?'

Phileas very truthfully answered in the negative ; and Mrs. Wilson returned to her narrative:

'I married, when I was barely eighteen, a man who had every quality to attract and to retain affection. And that was no manage de convenance on either side. Young as I was, I loved and appreciated him as fully as

my undisciplined nature permitted, : and I know that he truly loved me. ' ; I need not go into details, nor dwell upon the various circumstances that caused that brilliantly promising marriage to fail. They were all connected with that central fact of which you have been informed. My husband was a Catholic, and, as 1 learned long afterward, felt a certain remorse that he had been in so far false to his convictions as' to marry one without the pale. 1 will admit, however, that never had I the slightest clue to this feeling, in so far as he was concerned. lint from the very first it was only too evident that upon almost every principle of right and wrong my husband's views and my own were diametrically opposed. T have ofter remembered since with what perfect courtesy and gentleness, though with what unalterable firmness, he maintained his views; and with what anger, disdain, and headstrong perversity I opposed him. His opposition, in fact. awakened in me a special fury against him and the constant desire to thwart, him in every way. I contended that it was impossible for him to love me when he would not accede to my requests. Often have I seen him white and haggard from the struggle between his wish to please me and the dictates of conscience, which I would have overridden as I had overridden all other obstacles in the course of my life. lam perhaps wearying you, Mr. Kox ; but I shall soon have done.'

Phileas very truly answered that he found the narrative of absorbing interest, and the old woman went on :

'People are talking much nowadays of the Nietzechean philosophy, with its principle of the rights of strength over weakness, and the disposition to obtain all that one wants at the expense of everybody else. That is a crude summary of the matter: but that philosophy was mine. How that was necessarily opposed m many instances, and especially in one, by an earnest and devout Catholic, you will readily understand.' Phileas, while keeping his attention fixed upon the thread of that strange narrative, felt his curiosity almost painfully aroused by the question which the old' woman had asked, but which she seemed in no hurry to answer. Fumbling nervously with the objects upon the table, she let her gaze wander around the apartment, which possibly recalled to her many painful memories. All at once she leaned forward in her chair, with one of those almost convulsive movements that were of themselves sufficiently startling, and declared with a suddenness that deprived the voiing lawyer momentarily of his self possession : 'John Vorst, you must know, is my divorced husband.

(To be continued.)